TheArtistical

!!! New domain !!!

2013-01-04T12:37:00.000+01:00

Hey folks,
We have moved to a new domain which means that from now on we are available at

http://the-artistical.com/

All kinds of new posts or updates will only be posted there and no longer on this website right here.

Color Black and White pictures (alternative method)

2012-12-21T11:44:00.000+01:00

Here is part two with another way on how to color your black and white portraits. It won't be a long post as the method is very simple and straight forward. The coloring can be achieved within seconds and the effect does what its supposed to.

Nothing much left to say, so let's get started

This is the portrait that I am going to use as an example in this tutorial :

1.) Open the picture in Photoshop

2.) Duplicate the background layer and leave the background locked as a backup copy.

3.) Create a selection with your favorite selection tool. I'll go ahead and will be using the Polygonal Lasso tool this time just to show a little variety.

4.) Once you got a part or an object selected, go to Image > Adjustments...> „Hue/Saturation....“

5.) In the small window that pops up you wanna go ahead and check Colorize and now you can play around with the 3 sliders to mix a color that matches your selected object.

6.) As you can see in the above example it automatically colors her teeth red as well. That's no problem : Hit the "Ok" Button to apply the coloring, select the Eraser Tool (E) and erase the red color from her teeth. This is why we have created a duplicate of the background layer.

7.) And that's the basic procedure already. Repeat step 2-5 until you have colored the whole picture.

It is very easy to accomplish but needs some time until you have all the different segments colored.

Optional way for people with tablets/drawpads :

This is what I like to use : Do the whole coloring with the brush tool.

To do so create a new blank layer on top of your black and white background image and set the layer mode to „Color“.

Now all that is left is to pick a color via the color picker and start painting with your brush. I am in favor of this method as I am using a Wacom Bamboo drawing pad and it is the most comfortable for me.

Color Black&White Pictures ( Curves Adjustment Layer )

2012-12-15T12:15:00.000+01:00

In this tutorial I'm gonna be covering one method on how to color black and white pictures.

As always, thanks to the huge diversity that Photoshop offers there are multiple ways on how to achieve the coloring. I will only cover one of them right here. A different way can be found here : coming soon

The basic idea that comes with every BW-picture that you want to colorize is that you create a selection of an object or a certain part of the picture and then you do the magic on the

Let's get started :

1.) Open a Black and White picture of your choice in Photoshop.

I'm gonna be using the following picture as an example

2.) For better color results with this method I recommend you to change the image color mode to CMYK Color by navigating to „Image > Mode > CMYK Color“

3.) Now there are several ways to create a selection in Photoshop. For this method I prefere going with the Quick Selection Tool (W).

Tip : When you use the Quick Selection Tool you can hold the ALT-Key while clicking to exclude certain parts from your selection without having to create a new selection all over.

4.) Basically, for every object in the picture you need a seperate selection. So let's say you want to color the sky in blue. You select it with your prefered selection method.

5.) When that's set-up, go to your layers palette and click on „Create a new fill or adjustment layer“ and select „Curves...“ from it.

6.) Now you will get a new layer and you can play around with the Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and the Black Curves to achieve whatever color you want. This means that for each object you will have a separate layer which comes in very handy if you need to edit/erase something.

7.) Repeat those steps and color your black & white image bit by bit.

That's it for now. The next post will cover another method on how to color black-and-white pictures.

I'm very open for criticism so make sure you drop a comment in the comment section below if you got any questions left or you want me to explain something a little more detailed.

Until next time, see you !

Create your own Wallpaper #3 : Pokemon !

2012-12-05T22:02:00.000+01:00

So I've stumbled upon a very cool and original Pokemon wallpaper and I was wondering if I could recreate a very similar one with one or more pokemon of my choice.

This is what the original wallpaper looks like :

And then I found a very similar one , probably created by someone else :

The reason why I wanted to show this 2nd example is, because it lacks some little tweaks in my opinion and in the following tutorial I can teach you how you can achieve the best result possible !

Let's get started :

1.) Create a document in Photoshop with the dimensions of your desktop resolution. For me I am going with an image size of 1920x1080.

2.) Create a new layer and grab the Gradient Tool (G) and create a White to Light Grey gradient across the whole canvas. Make sure you have a radial gradient selected. (You can use whatever colors you like ofc.)

3.) Time to choose your Pokemon Team. Preferably get images like the following examples with a white background. Reason for that is that they are easier to cut out then.

4.) Open your Pokemon Picture of choice in Photoshop and make sure to remove the white background with the Magic Wand Tool (W) by simply clicking on the background around the Pokemon and hitting ESC after a selection was created. If you open the picture in Photoshop and you see something like this :

It means that the background is transparent and you can simply hit CTRL+A to select all and CTRL+C to copy it. We now wanna paste it onto our background that we have created before. So switch back to the gradient background and paste the selection onto the canvas.

If your Pokemon seems to be to small hit CTRL+T to transform the selected layer, hold SHIFT and drag out one of the four corners to re-size your test subject.

5.) Once you are satisfied with the result grab the Magic Wand Tool (W) and still with the latest layer on top selected (Should be Layer 2) click somewhere on the background and it will create a selection all around the Pokemon. Important : Make sure you also cover up encased spots like the whole between wing and neck in this example :

You can add spots like that to the selection by holding SHIFT and clicking again on said spot.

If you have everything around the Pokemon selected press CTRL+SHIFT+I to inverse the selection or go to Selection > Inverse.

6.) Almost done. Duplicate Layer 1 which is our gradient background and drag it to the very top if it isn't added there automatically. In this process you need to have your selection still active. Now with the Layer 1 Copy selected hit DEL to crop the form of the Pokemon out.

7.) Get an element/abstract picture or something that would match your Pokemon and paste it between Layer 2 and "Layer 1 - copy"

8.) With "Layer 1 - copy" selected go to your layers window, press the "Add a layer style"-Button and select "Drop Shadow..." from the drop-down menu.

9.) You can play around and adjust/try out some new settings or just leave the default drop shadow effect values and you're pretty much done.

This is what a result could look like :

10.) Repeat and add as many Pokemon as you wish !

Hope you enjoyed this tutorial ! Have a nice day ;-)

Tutorial : Create a picture from text (colored)

2012-11-30T23:25:00.001+01:00

Here is a small addition to this tutorial, which showed you how to transform a regular picture into a picture that is created only from text in black & white. In the following HowTo I am going to be showing you how to achieve the same effect while keeping the colors of the original picture. The reason I am separating this, is because it uses a quite different technique.

Here are two different examples :

Okay let's get started !

Difficulty : Very Easy

1.) Open a picture that you want to transform

2.) Duplicate the background layer by right-clicking it and selecting "Duplicate layer..."

3.) Then create a new Layer and drag it between the background- and the new background-copy-layer

4.) Fill the new layer black with the Paint Bucket Tool (G)

5.) Create a text layer on the very top with the Text Tool (T) and instead of just clicking somewhere to write something , drag out a text area from the very far top left to the bottom right of the canvas.

6.) Fill up the whole area with text using a small font-size (Font-Color : White) and writing something related to the picture. For this example I'm gonna be pasting "Why so serious ?" all over because I use a picture with the Joker from Batman.

7.) This is how it should be looking by now :

(Notice how my text area barley exceeds the canvas borders ? That's so your text doesn't look so blocky and organized when pasting the same thing over and over. Try it out and you will see what I mean)

8.) We're almost done. Drag the Text-Layer under the background-copy layer now, select the background-copy go to the menu Layer > Create Clipping mask or simply hit CTRL+ALT+G and you are done !

You could now go and select your text-layer , hit CTRL+T to transform it and you could slightly rotate the text if you wanted, to add a nice little touch to it.

Until then, see you next time ;-)

Oh, in case you wonder what picture I have used : The picture is by Irina Bolshakova.

Tutorial : Create a picture from text (Black & White)

2012-11-19T11:46:00.000+01:00

In this tutorial I'm gonna be showing you how to transform a simple portrait or an image of your choice into a picture that looks like its made only from text.

Here are two examples :

The effect is pretty simple to create and looks kinda cool , so let's get started :

1.) Open up a picture in Photoshop and create a new layer (CTRL+SHIFT+N)

2.) Fill that new layer black with the Fill Tool (G)

3.) Create a new text layer by selecting the Text Tool (T) and instead of just clicking somewhere to create the new text layer, click down at the very upper left of your canvas , hold down you mouse button and drag out a text area to the very bottom right.

4.) Choose a small font and font color white and now fill up the whole area with a text of your choice. Its always good if the the text is related to the picture. For example the name of the person/object or something like that. (The smaller the font size is the more details you will get)

5.) Now for the "tricky" part. Select your text layer by clicking on it and add a new layer mask by pressing this button :

6.) When the layer mask is created click your background layer to select it (the original image) hit CTRL+A to select all and CTRL+C to copy it. Then ALT+Click in the white layer mask box and paste the background image. Now all that's left is to click on the text layer icon again and you can see your result.

In case that was a little to quick here is a picture that shows what to click and what to do :

Optional : If you're not satisfied with the result, then there is a little trick to bring out the contours of the image a little better.

First you need to merge all the different layers you have by selecting them all and pressing CTLR+E.
(To select them all you click on the highest layer, in this case the text layer with the layer mask, hold down SHIFT and click on the lowest layer, our background layer. Then just hit CTRL+E)
Then go to Image > Adjustments > Curves and there you can play around a little to bring out your contours the best

And that's it ! A nice effect that can be created within seconds. If you're looking for a way to have the same effect with a colored result see the next tutorial : here

Tutorial : Advanced face swap ( Auto-blend )

2012-11-11T17:07:00.000+01:00

Okay, so finally here it is : a short addition to the first face swapping tutorial which did not cover what to do if the people's skin color differs. I will be using the following pictures as an example :

We wanna go ahead and put Samuel L. Jackson's face onto Chris Browns head. As you can see the skin tone and the lighting are different. At this point I want to state that there are various ways to accomplish this in Photoshop and I will be showing one way to do it using the Auto-Blend function of Adobe Photoshop.

If we would want to swap the faces using the technique shown in my simplified tutorial you would end up looking at something like this :

Doesn't look horrible maybe, but its still not authentic enough. You could go ahead and hit CTRL+U to bring up the Hue/Saturation window to adjust the colors of the pasted face ...

...looks a tad bit better but still not perfect. Because it is a bit hard to find the perfect values I recommend using the Auto-blend method so Photoshop itself will find and adjust all the colors.

So let's get started :

1.) Open the image of the face you want to transfer and select the Lasso Tool (L) and shape out the face with it. When you're done , hit CTRL+C , change to the other image where you want the face to be and hit CTRL+V to paste the face onto the head. Now you can adjust the position and size after pressing CTRL+T to active the Free Transform mode.

Tip : You can change the opacity of the newly created face layer to about 50% while adjusting the size to orientate where to position the eyes etc.

2.) After you have positioned the face satisfactorily CTRL+Click the face layer to automatically select it. With the face selected you need to inverse the selection by pressing CTRL+SHIFT+I or choosing from the top menu Select > Inverse. Now we have everything selected but the face. What we need to do is to expand the selection by going to Select > Modify > Expand from the top menu and expanding the selection by 4px. It depends on the size of the picture you're working with. If the picture is only 640*480 you might want to only expand the selection by 2px for example. In this example I am working with an image size of 1200*800 ~ .

3.) With that done Inverse the selection again to have the face selected again with a little border of the face not selected.

4.) Now click and select the background layer (which is the head that we want to copy the face onto) and with the selection still active hit the DEL button on your keyboard. This should delete the original face under the pasted face.

5.) At this point we're almost done. Deselect everything now by pressing CTRL+D. Then hold down your CTRL-key and click each layer once to have them both selected at the same time. Now all you have to do is choose Edit > Auto-Blend Layers... and select Panorama mode in the settings window that will pop up and we are done !

A pretty good result if you consider that all this can be done within one minute !

New Blog banner : Futuristic, Grungy Metal Text Effect

2012-11-06T11:29:00.001+01:00

Hey there,
as I have recently updated the blogs layout a bit, I also created a brand new banner with this awesome looking Futuristic Mental Text effect. Well, because I have posted so many text effect tutorials lately and it starts to get kind of boring I will just link you to the two tutorials that helped me create this thing.

Here is the original text-tutorial by Dylan Roberson from tutplus.com : [ Click ]

In case you are interested in a video tutorial, here's the video that led me to the original written one.

Until next time , peace ;)

Create your own Wallpaper #2 : Glowing Lines

2012-11-04T12:39:00.001+01:00

Second tutorial in an hopefully never-ending series.

This time I'm gonna be showing you how to create a wallpaper with a nice looking Glow-Lines effect and this is what you could achieve after following this tutorial :

______________________________________________________________________

I'm going to show you how to create the simple but nice looking effect yourself and if you experiment with some settings you might get a really cool result. Soooo let's get started !

1.) Open Photoshop and create a new document with the dimensions of your desktop resolution.

2.) Once that's done double click your background layer in order to unlock it and double click it again to add a layer style.

3.) The only thing we need here is a Gradient Overlay. For the three sample pictures at the top I've used a simple Black to Dark-grey radial gradient. Here's the settings for it :

4.) Once that's done you need to select the Brush tool (B) and right-click somewhere on the canvas to bring up the Brush settings. There you need to choose a regular brush ( Select one of the first 4 ones ), set the size to about 4px and the Hardness to 100%

5.) Next you wanna go ahead and select the Pen Tool (Hotkey : P) and draw a curve. The Pen Tool is really not that hard to use. Perform a LeftClick somewhere on the left half of the picture to set a starting point. Then click somewhere in the centre of the picture, but this time don't let your mouse go and drag the mouse around while still holding down the left Mousebutton until you get a nice curve. Same for the last ankor point that you want to set somewhere on the right side of the picture. In the end it should be looking like a nice and simple wave.

6.) Create a new layer (CTRL+SHIFT+N) and go to your Paths window. It should be next to your layers Tab. In case you don't see it go to Windows -> Paths and it will automatically show for you. Right-click your newly created path and select "Stroke Path...". Form the DropDown select Brush and check the checkbox that reads Simulate Pressure. Also make sure your primary color is white. Now you can right click your path again and select Delete Path. You should be left with your wave shaped brush stroke.

7.) Now we need to add the glowing. For that go to your layers window again and double click the layer created in Step 6.). Select and check Outer Glow. Set Opacity to 100%, Mode to Normal and select any color you want.

And you are done ! You are free to do eveything you want now, you could go ahead and write a text using this technique, duplicate the Layer that you have created and add some more glowing lines in different colors, play around with the size. It's limited to your own creativity :-)

Until next time, see ya !

Tutorial : Glass Font #2

2012-11-01T00:05:00.002+01:00

Alright here is another way to get a nice glass font in Photoshop. Well actually it's the same procedure but with different settings on the layer style.

This is what we will be looking at :

Okay lets get started.

1.) Open a nice Background of your choice and create a new Text Layer using the Text Tool (T)
For this tutorial I use Font-Size 500px and the font called "Franklin Gothic Heavy"
Note : If you use a smaller font-size, you will have to adjust the layer style settings that I show later

2.) When you got your text add a layer style by clicking the button shown below and select "Blending Options..." from the drop-down menu.

3.) Okay, we will need the following effects : Bevel & Emboss, Stroke, Inner Glow and Outer Glow

4.) To keep it less complicated I will just post the settings for the example shown above. Note that you may have to lower some values if you are using a smaller font-size.

The first and hardest step about this tutorial is to create a custom "Gloss Contour" in the Bevel & Emboss settings. You can either try to create one similar to mine using your mouse and dragging the points to the right spots or you can also make it super precise by adding the exact values for the points. You can conceive the Glass contour window as a coordinate system where Input is the x-value and Output the y-value.

As we continue it gets easier again :

When you have done everything correctly so far you should be looking at something like this :

5.) Almost done : The last step is to change the bleding mode to Overlay or Soft light ( I use Overlay ) and change the opacity to a value that you think looks the best (I figured 80% looks good).

And this is the final result :

You could either let it like this or add another nice touch.

Optional :

6.) Duplicate the Background Layer by selecting it and hitting CTRL+J.

7.) CTRL+LeftClick the Textlayer Picture in order to create a selection around the text. You will notice if you hold CTRL and hover above the text layer , your cursor will change.

8.) When you got the selection with the background copy selected, go to Filter -> Distort -> Twirl and apply the filter with the standard values. This adds a nice touch and makes it look even more realistic as the background is a little distorted behind the glass letters.

Tip : If you use a smaller font as mentioned above, you will get something like this when using these settings:

Looks ugly nothing like the nice glass effect shown above. The problem can be solved very easily : Go to the Bevel & Emboss settings of your text-layer and lower the size in the "Structure" Group Box in the Bevel & Emboss window ( I used 9px for font-size 500px, so for a smaller font use 3 to 1px )

Create your own Wallpaper #1 : Rainbow

2012-10-27T15:01:00.000+02:00

There are so many ways on creating nice HD wallpapers yourself in Photoshop, so I figured I would post a tutorial series on it. Today starting with a rainbow/spectrum wallpaper. I've seen alot of abstract wallpapers that look like this but here's how you create one yourself that is fully customizable to your own tastes.

So this is what a result could look like after following this tutorial :

First step as always create a new File in Photoshop with the resolution of your current screen resolution ( mine's 1920x1080 px )
Unlock your Background layer by double clicking on it
Select the Gradient Tool (Hotkey : G) and create a black and white gradient form the bottom to the top. To do so click somewhere on the bottom of the image, hold shift and drag up until the upper edge of your background.
You should be looking at something like this :

Next go to Filter > Distort > Wave
In the upcoming window change the number of generators to 10 and the Type to "Square" and press OK.

Result so far :

Time to add some color : To do so, double click on your layer to add a Layer Style and select Gradient Overlay. Double click on the black and white gradient and select a spectrum preset gradient. In order to see that click the small wheel in the top right of the latest window and select "Spectrums" form the drop-down. If this was a little unclear here is an illustration :

When you got the right gradient selected you need to change Blend Mode to : Linear Burn, Opacity to 80% and the Angle to 0°

The following step is optional but I find it adds a nice extra touch to it : Create a new layer and a black&white gradient just like the one in the very beginning. Change the Blend mode of the layer from Normal to "Soft Light". It just makes the bottom a bit darker and the top of the picture a bit lighter

Basically you could let it like this and use it as background already. Or you could add a little touch to it, namely the rectangles that you can see in the preview at the very top of this post.

To create those we need to make a new paint brush.
For that hit CTRL+N to create a new document and choose as width : 50px and as height : 100px
Color the newly created mini-picutre black using the paint bucket tool (G)
Once that's done go to Edit > Define Brush preset and hit OK as soon as the new window pops up
Switch back to your background and select the brush tool (B) , right click on the image and select your newly created brush at the very bottom
Before we start painting we need to change some brush settings and create new layer.
CTRL+SHIFT+N to create a new layer and then hit F5 ( Or go to Window > Brush ) to bring up the brush options window
First you wanna select Brush Tip Shape on the left and change the Brush size to 100px and Spacing to 350%
Shape Dynamics : Set Size-Jitter to 100%
Scattering : Set Scatter to 1000% , Count to 1 and Count Jitter to 100%
Transfer : Opacity Jitter : 100%

Make sure your primary color is White and when that's all done you can hold down your left mouse button and draw all over the picture. Now you can either let the rectangles white or you can go ahead and change the layer blending mode from Normal to something like Overlay or Soft Light.

And that's it ! I hoped you enjoyed it and see you next time.

Tutorial : Glass Font #1

2012-10-26T05:10:00.001+02:00

It's been a while since the last post but here is another tutorial.
As you might be able to guess from the title it is going to be about another text effect.

Before we start I'd like to show you how the result would look like :

I won't be going too much into detail as the steps are very similar to the ones in the Gold Text tutorial.

Open up Photoshop and open a wallpaper that you like or one that you think would match with the glass text. If there is none, create a new image (File -> New...) and fill the background with a color of your choice using the Paint Bucket Tool ( Hotkey : G )
Once that's done, select the TextType Tool (T) and write a word with a big (200-300px) font (font-color : white). In this tutorial I'm gonna be using the font called "Franklin Gothic ITC Heavy"
Then we need to add a layer style by clicking the following button while having the text layer selected

From the drop-down choose "Blending Options..."
The next window should seem familiar if you have followed the gold text tutorial.
We need to add the following Styles : Bevel & Emboss, Stroke, Inner Shadow, Inner Glow, Satin, Drop Shadow
For keeping it short and easy i will be posting my settings that have worked out pretty well and that were used to get the result above. As always you can try and experiment with the settings to get something new.

After you are done if all the steps you should be looking at something like this :

If so, you are ready for the last step : Go to your layers window and with the text layer selected, change "Fill" from 100% to 0% and you're done !

Tutorial : How to create a Favicon in Photoshop

2012-10-15T05:51:00.002+02:00

This is a little HowTo on how to pimp your own website a little bit by creating your own Favicon.
You may wonder what a Favicon is. The name itself stands for "Favorite Icon" and when you open a webpage in your browser the Favicon can be found here :

Image source : Wikipedia.org

Usually you will have a boring white page in that position instead of a custom icon. In order to change that we have to create one using Adobe Photoshop.

We need to download a plug-in for Photoshop called ICO Format in order to be able to save .ico files. The download for the plugin can be found at http://www.telegraphics.com.au/sw/. There might be other plugins but for this tutorial i recommend using this one.

You will find a Readme.html along with the downloaded plugin but here is a short version of how to install it :

Go to C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop\Plug-ins\
Create a new folder called 'File Formats' if there's none yet
Put the downloaded "ICOFormat.8bi" into the File Formats folder and start up Photoshop

After that's done create a new picture in Photoshop with the dimensions 64x64 pixels.
Now you are free to draw or design whatever you like

When you're done hit File > Save As and select "Save as : Icon ( Windows ICON)(*.ico)"

Aaaand you are finished !

At this point I'd like to tell you how to set your favicon up but it depends on what webhost you are on. For Google Blogger you can directly upload a file and for all the others :

Upload the .ico to the root directory of your webspace and then insert the following line into the <head> section of all of your webpages :

<link href="/favicon.ico" rel="SHORTCUT ICON"></link>

Tutorial : Nice Gold Text Effect

2012-10-11T21:43:00.003+02:00

Hey, finally back with another post !
I figured I would show how to create a nice Gold Text effect.

This is what you will be able to accomplish after this tutorial :

For example a nice wallpaper with your name on it

Difficulty : Easy (but needs a little time investment)

Okay, let's get started :

1.) Open up Photoshop and create a new Project by hitting CTRL+N (Resolution is not important, but if you want to use it as a wallpaper for example, then chose your desktop resolution)

2.) Choose the Paint Bucket Tool (Hot-key : G) and paint the background Black.

3.) Select the Text Tool ( Hotkey : T ) and click anywhere on the picture to start typing your feature gold-text (Text-color : white).

4.) Right click your newly created text-layer and select "Duplicate Layer"

5.) With the new layer selected we need to add a layer style by pressing the following button :

6.) Select Gradient overlay from the drop-down menu.

7.) The following window will pop-up, in which you click on the gradient to edit the colors.

8.) Then again another window will pop up in which you can edit the gradient colors. Try to select similar colors to mine and hit OK. You can edit it by clicking on the small marked squares in the picture below

9.) Still in the Layer Style window change the Style from 'Linear' to 'Reflected'

This is kinda like how your text should now look like at the moment :

10.) If you have done everything correctly, it is time to click on 'Bevel & Emboss' and configure it like the following :

Check Contour on the left but don't change anything there.

11.) Inner Glow : Same as above , try to adapt to the picture below

And we're done with the first layer. You may have noticed that all the changes were applied to the top text layer and now we still have to edit the original one below.

12.) As it is the same procedure just slightly different I will not go into detail and just show the settings that have worked for me pretty well. You may have to experiment around to get a decent result.

Click on the original Text layer that has been duplicated and add another layer style :

And now you should be good to go :) If you like to pimp your result a bit more, then you can create a brand new layer above your text layers, select the Brush Tool, select a Brush like this :

and you can start painting little white stars at the edge of some letters to make it seem like it sparkles.

And that's basically it. I hope you enjoyed it. :-)

Tutorial : Black and White in Photoshop

2012-10-04T01:55:00.000+02:00

This time I'm going to post a pretty easy one.
It's how to do Black/White Pictures in Photoshop. A friend recently requested me to edit a picture for him (TalesFromBombay). The task was, to isolate a certain part in the picture and let it be in color while the rest of the picture should be black and white. This effect is pretty useful to make certain things stand out (e.g. a single person standing in a crowded place)

With that being said, let's begin :

Difficulty : Easy

1.) Open up Photoshop and the picture you want to edit

2.) Go to your layer window and click on the small button that says "Create new fill or adjustment layer" and select "Black & White..." from the drop down-menu. Ignore the pop-up (that let's you change color options) and hit OK.

3. Now you will notice that you have just created a new layer. With that layer selected, click on the Eraser Tool (or press 'E') and start painting over the area that you want to stand out.

To understand what is actually happening right here and why we need to use the Eraser Tool to "color" something. At the beginning we have just created a black&white layer above our original picture. You can imagine this new layer as a black glass panel that you put above the picture. When you look through that glass panel, you see the picture in black&white. But when you put a hole in that panel, you can see right through and you see the original picture with all its colors.

4.) Now it is just a matter of patience and concentration. When you get to tight spots to "color" simply smaller your brush size in the upper left corner or try lowering the brush hardness. When you're done, there is nothing else to do than to save the image in the format of your desire :-)

Tutorial : How to face swap in Photoshop

2012-10-02T06:38:00.000+02:00

Here is the tutorial as promised :-)
Let's quit the unnecessary talking and get started :

For this tutorial we will be using the following picture :

(We want to copy the right face on the left girl)

1.) Start up Adobe Photoshop (For this tutorial I will be using the latest version : Photoshop CS6)
2.) Open up the picture you would like to edit
3.) Unlock the image layer by double clicking on the lock in the layer menu (usually in the bottom right corner )

4.) Select the Brush tool by pressing the 'B' button or simply by clicking on it.

5.) Press the 'Q' Button while having the Brush Tool selected. This will enable the Quick Masking mode in which you can create selections using the Brush Tool.

6.) Before starting to select the face, make sure your Brush Hardness is set to the lowest ( 0% ). The Brush settings can be found in the upper left corner.

7.) Now you can start painting over the face using the Brush Tool.
You should be painting with a transparent red color and it should look something like this :

8.) Press 'Q' again to see the selection. You will notice that everything got selected but the part that you just painted. Simply hit 'CTRL+SHIFT+I' to inverse the selection or simply click on the top menu on Select -> Inverse.

9.) Now hit CTRL+C and CTRL+V to copy and paste the face

10.) You should have created a new layer when you check the layer menu. Because you have just copied and pasted the face in the same position , we need to move it.

11.) Hit CTRL+T to transform your new layer and drag the face over on the other person.

12.) After positioning you can hit 'Flip Horizontal' in this example when you right click on the selected face.

13.) Hit ENTER to apply your changes and you're done.

Looks pretty good, doesn't it ? This was of course a very lucky example as both girls have almost the same skin-color and they are standing right next to each other which means that we don't even have to adjust the size. I think I'll cover skin-color change etc. in another tutorial sometimes :-)

New : Click here for an advanced tutorial !

Hilarious : Face Swapping / Facebombing

2012-10-02T05:25:00.001+02:00

Ohh yeah... Again and again I find it very amusing when I find a similar picture on the internet.
For those who may not know yet : The procedure that happened in this picture, is also known as Faceswapping or Facebombing. You simply switch the face of one or more individuals with one that looks really funny (e.g. if someone's grimacing) and the best part of it is, that all of this can be easily achieved by using modern picture editing software like Adobe Photoshop.

I assume the best material for face swaps are photobombed pictures. What that is ? No it has nothing to do with real bombs! You may know it : You want to have a picture taken of you and someone special in order to document an important day in your life and later when you check the picture at home, you suddenly realize that there is a drunk bloke in the background. And that's exactly what you call a Photobomb. Someone somehow "ruined" your picture by standing in the wrong place.

Here is an example :

Well , the reason why I write about this probably well known topic is, that it is not hard at all to create such pictures by oneself. The good thing is that the internet is full of images that can be used for faceswaps.

That's why I think I am going to post my very own tutorial on how to do face swapping in Adobe Photoshop just for fun :-)

"Art is dead"

2012-09-30T21:02:00.003+02:00

"You can't earn money with arts. Who would buy that?"
"You will end up homeless and unemployed"

These were the words of a friend of mine when we were chatting about random stuff and somehow got to the topic arts. I must say that I find these quotes pretty narrow-minded and can only assume that he was referring to the traditional art as in "creating a tableau and selling it to a museum". If so I don't want to fully agree on it but I'm sure that you will have a hard time to to make it big with something like that as a young artist.

But that's not the point right now. This conversation showed me how some people are still believing in the old fashioned picutre of an artist. In which they are supposed to wear a beret, live in a mess and draw oil paintings every day. I know better than that. Time and modern technology helped to bring a big change to the art sector. For example, let's mention an artist job that my buddy might be interested in and which could show him how awesome and up-to-date art can be. I am talking about a 2D production artist that works for a video game company for example.
His task is it to create and draw characters, the setup of certain scenarios (in terms of lighting, mood etc.) and so on. By that he builds the foundation for what we can see in the video game itself later.

Image credit to Empire Building Network

Take this picture for example. On the left you can see the sketch that an artist has created. With tons of little notes and explanations. And on the right you can see the finished 3D modelled character which will appear in the game like that.

With that said, we just let another awesome job unmentioned. Namely the 3D-artist. The sculptor of today. The sculptor that does not use marble to create his masterpieces but virtual polygons. With the use of complex modelling programs he is able to transform a harmless little 2D sketch into a movable character in-game.

So much for art is dead ! I could go on listing many more unnoticed activities and jobs that have very well something to do with arts and which are extremely profitable.

The beginning of a harmless little Blog

2012-09-30T03:18:00.001+02:00

Sooo... First post ever on my own blog !

My motivation for this ? I've always liked the idea of an open journal but never felt like creating one myself. I didn't know what to write about and nor did I know how all of this really worked.

...Until a good friend of mine told me something about him blogging and how easy and great it was.
After his report I suddenly felt the urge to create a blog myself and create a nice little place on the web
where I can be myself and write about whatever I want. Of course its not going to be random trash talk.

I will try to follow a certain pattern/topic but I can't tell by now. I think that most likely it will be about arts in general whether it'll be a small (photoshop) tutorial, an artwork of mine or to share my opinion on a certain topic. (Yeah I guess that's pretty much what blogs are ment for !:))

As someone who likes to take things as they come I can't tell form now how this whole thing will develop.
I just like the idea of a blog as sort of an open diary on which you can look back and remember the one or other. It also might help to get connected to some like-minded people ! Who knows !

I think this is it for now. Not much more to say !
Maybe one day I can come back to look at this post and remember how a great thing started :-)